Mike Peterson
A local police department in Kansas says they're seeing accidental calls that appear to be originating from Apple Watch devices, with the errant summons pulling resources away from actual emergencies.
According to local media outlet Fox Kansas City, the Overland Park police department complains that it receives so many accidental phone calls that it is becoming a distraction. The Overland Park's 911 center typically gets about 250 emergency calls an hour, authorities said.
"What happens is while people are moving around in their sleep or exercising, they'll get the Apple Watch into the emergency mode. Without knowing it, the watch will actually call 911," said police captain Jim Sutterby.
The issue appears to be the Apple Watch Emergency SOS feature, which will automatically make a call to first responders if the side button is held for a period of time.
Users can mitigate the issue by placing a case on their Apple Watch device, or by customizing or disabling Emergency SOS.
However, the feature can be a literal life-saver in emergency situations, so it's recommended that users keep it on. Since the debut of the Apple Watch, there has been a steady stream of reports of the device providing help to users in distress.
Local police in Kansas City say that Apple Watch users who have made an accidental call to authorities shouldn't hang up. Instead, they should inform the dispatcher that the call was made inadvertently.
This isn't the first time that Apple Watch safety feature caused problems for local emergency responders. In 2018, workers at an Apple repair and refurbishment facility in California would accidentally call 911 about 20 times a day. While not specified by Apple or local authorities, it was believed that the wearable's SOS feature was to blame for the errant calls.
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15 Comments
It’s happened to me before. I was working out with my Apple Watch on, doing push-ups. Apparently my wrist was bent enough that the top of my hand pressed the side button hard enough and long enough to activate the 911 call. In the middle of the set I heard someone saying something but I couldn’t make it out because my hands were also wrapped. When I checked my iPhone later I saw that I had initiated the call. Oops.
Flip side, a friend of mine is a police dispatcher. She’s constantly telling me how they get bogus “solicitor” calls, you know, the ones where they’re trying to get you to send money for something that typically sounds like a scam. She frequently plays along for a while, then the rest of the dispatch team listen to the recording later and all get a laugh out of it. They also get drunks calling for things that aren’t emergencies. I’ll have to ask but I would guess that the accidental Apple Watch calls are far fewer than the other calls that end up just being nonsense.
To keep this in perspective, she works in a busy city in Virginia, it’s not like she’s in some slow, back woods town.
Just yesterday I was riding my bike over some rough terrain when I felt a buzzing from my watch. I looked down to see that it was about to make an emergency call to the local first responders. I was able to disable the feature before it made the call. But if I hadn't been paying attention, I would have sent the local EMTs on a wild goose chase. Perhaps Apple should consider tweaking the sensitivity of that feature a bit.
Triggered this while riding my motorbike due to wrist flex. Couldn’t hear over the wind and engine noise. To make it worse i have two emergency contacts setup who also got a text, so they assumed I crashed my motorbike.
I'm curious why this is one city. As TheGadgetGuy said, this should be nationwide/etc if it's an Apple issue. Only Kansas City? Not Topeka? Not Kansas City MO? Kinda odd.